Kendra+Stuever

Kendra Stuever Article Review: “Toward a Conception of Culturally Responsive Classroom Management” by Carol S. Weinstein, Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, and Mary Curran In the United States, most teachers are white, but in lots of schools, several students are not. White teachers bring European American classroom management into their classrooms because that is how they were trained, how they grew up, and what they perceive as the norm. However, most teachers can be far more effective in several different realms if they approach classroom management in a “culturally responsive” manner. Each culture has its own way of disciplining children. Therefore, if a teacher can follow the same pattern as the students’ culture, he or she can accomplish far more with the students. The idea of treating each child based off of his or her culture is called Culturally Responsive Classroom Management, or CRCM. There are five main components of CRCM. In the first component, the teacher must have “Recognition of One’s Own Ethnocentrism and Biases.” This means she becomes aware of her own cultural or racial identity. Then she raises awareness of cultural diversity with her students through activities such as readings about different cultures. After she has established this cultural awareness, the students examine how their cultural groups influence how they act and how others act around them. Then the teacher begins to apply the strategies she has learned from the entire process of CRCM (29-30). The second component requires the teacher to have “Knowledge of Students’ Cultural Backgrounds.” This means she asks questions about each student’s value system in relation to family, education, interpersonal relationship styles, discipline, time and space, religion, food, health and hygiene, history traditions and holidays. This background knowledge provides the teacher of an idea of the best way to respond to individual students (30-31). The teacher develops an “Awareness of the Broader Social, Economic, and Political Context” in the third component. She must know how the community feels about social, economic, and political issues at the time. The students must be aware of what things are not acceptable regardless of their culture, such as being late. The teacher listens to the students and the community to develop a true working classroom management (31-32). In the fourth component, the teacher must have the “Ability and Willingness to Use Culturally Appropriate Management Strategies.” She develops a method to treat everyone equally, to be aware of new ways of dealing with “problem” kids based on culture at the time, and to teach the students how to create mutual accommodation (there are times when the teacher will accommodate the students’ cultures, and there are times when the students will accommodate the teacher’s culture). In order to implement this component, it is necessary for the teacher to complete training specifically about cultural classroom management. In most teacher training programs, little or no classroom management training includes a cultural dimension (32-33). In perhaps the most important component, the teacher develops a “Commitment to Building Caring Classroom Communities.” She moves away from solely teacher-controlled classrooms into a collaboration of everyone who takes part in the class. She teaches her students how to treat each other respectfully regardless of their differences. She displays her own caring towards her students as often as possible. Once this caring element has been established, other learning issues will fall into place (33-35). Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to develop CRCM because the process is often misconstrued as stereotyping. The issue is so emotionally charged it is difficult to take the opportunities we have to make them useful and helpful for us. “Yet classroom management is also a powerful influence on student achievement- greater than students’ general intelligence, home environment, motivation, and socioeconomic status” (26-27). Each teacher, regardless of how culturally competent he or she is, should take the time to be involved in Culturally Responsive Classroom Management.

Weinstein, Carol S., Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, and Mary Curran “Toward a Conception of Culturally Responsive Classroom Management” Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 1, January/ February 2004, p.25-38